The career of Kirkaldy was rapidly drawing towards its close. During the life of Mar, who succeeded Lennox in the regency, the brave governor succeeded in maintaining possession not only of the castle, but of the city of Edinburgh, in spite of all opposition. But Morton, the next regent, was a still more formidable foe. The hatred between this man and Kirkaldy was mutual, and it was of the most deadly kind. And no wonder. Morton, as profligate as cruel, had seduced the fair and false Helen Leslie, wife of Sir James Kirkaldy, the gallant brother of the governor, and thereby inflicted the worst wound on the honour of an ancient family. A more awful story than the betrayal of her husband, and the seizure of his castle of Blackness, through the treachery of this wretched woman, is not to be found in modern history. Tarpeia alone is her rival in infamy, and the end of both was the same. The virulence of hereditary feud is a marked feature in our Scottish annals; but no sentiment of the kind could have kindled such a flame of enmity as burned between Morton and Kirkaldy. From the hour when the former obtained the regency, the war became one of extermination.
Morton, it must be owned, showed much diplomatic skill in his arrangements. His first step was to negotiate separately with the country party of the loyalists, so as to detach them from Kirkaldy; and in this he perfectly succeeded. The leading nobles, Huntley and Argyle, were wearied with the war; Chatelherault, whom we have already known as Arran, was broken down by age and infirmities; and even those who had been the keenest partisans of the queen, Herries and Seton, were not disinclined to transfer their allegiance to her son. The treaty of Perth left Kirkaldy with no other adherents save Lord Home, the Melvilles, Maitland, and his garrison. The city had revolted, and was now under the provostship of fierce old Lord Lindesay of the Byres, who was determined to humble his predecessor. Save the castle rock of Edinburgh, and the hardy band that held it, all Scotland had submitted to Morton.
Killigrew, the English ambassador, advised him to yield. "No!" replied Kirkaldy. "Though my friends have forsaken me, and the city of Edinburgh hath done so too, yet I will defend this castle to the last!" The man whom Moray thought a tool, had expanded to the bulk of a hero.
Meantime, English engineers were occupied in estimating the capabilities of the castle as a place of defence. They reported that, with sufficient artillery, it might be reduced in twenty days; and, accordingly, Morton determined to besiege it so soon as the period of truce agreed on by the treaty of Perth should expire. Kirkaldy was not less resolute to maintain it.
At six o'clock, on the morning of 1st January 1573, a warning gun from the castle announced that the treaty had expired, and the standard of the Queen was unfurled on the highest tower, amidst the acclamations of the garrison. Four-and-twenty hours previously, Kirkaldy had issued a proclamation, warning all loyal subjects of the Queen to depart forthwith from the city; and terrible indeed was the situation of those who neglected that seasonable warning. Morton began the attack; and it was answered by an incessant discharge from the batteries upon the town.
Civil war had assumed its worst form. By day the cannon thundered; at night the garrison made sorties, and fired the city: all was wrack and ruin. Morton, bursting with fury, found that, unassisted, he could not conquer Grange.
English aid was asked from, and given by, the unscrupulous Elizabeth. Drury, who had helped Morton in his dishonourable treason at Restalrig, marched into Scotland with the English standard displayed, bringing with him fifteen hundred harquebussiers, one hundred and fifty pikemen, and a numerous troop of gentlemen volunteers; while the train of cannon and baggage came round by sea to Leith, where a fleet of English ships cruised, to cut off all succour from the Continent.
The English summons to surrender was treated by Kirkaldy with scorn. Up went a scarlet banner, significant of death and defiance, on the great tower of King David. Indomitable, as in the days of his early youth, when the confederates of St Andrews defied the universe in arms, the Scottish champion looked calmly from his rock on the preparations for the terrible assault.
Five batteries were erected around the castle, but not with impunity. The cannon of Kirkaldy mowed down the pioneers when engaged in their trenching operations; and it was not until Trinity Sunday, the 17th of May, that the besiegers opened their fire.
"At two o'clock in the afternoon, the five batteries opened a simultaneous discharge upon the walls of the castle. Bravely and briskly its cannoneers replied to them, and deep-mouthed Mons Meg, with her vast bullets of black whin, the thundering carthouns, basilisks, serpents, and culverins, amid fire and smoke, belched their missiles from the old gray towers, showering balls of iron, lead, and stone at the batteries; while the incessant ringing of several thousand harquebusses, calivers, and wheel-lock petronels, added to the din of the double cannonade. From the calibre of the great Mons Meg, which yet frowns en barbe over the ramparts, one may easily imagine the dismay her enormous bullets must have caused in the trenches so far below her.
"For ten days the furious cannonade continued, on both sides, without a moment's cessation. On the 19th, three towers were demolished, and enormous gaps appeared in the curtain walls; many of the castle guns were dismounted, and destroyed by the falling of the ancient masonry: a shot struck one of the largest culverins fairly on the muzzle, shattering it to pieces, and scattering the splinters around those who stood near. A very heavy battery was discharged against King David's Tower, a great square bastel-house, the walls of which were dark with the lapse of four centuries. On the 23d, a great gap had been beaten in its northern side, revealing the arched hall within; and as the vast old tower, with its cannon, its steel-clad defenders, and the red flag of defiance still waving above its machicolated bartizan, sank with a mighty crash to shapeless ruin, the wild shriek raised by the females in the castle, and the roar of the masonry rolling like thunder down the perpendicular rocks, were distinctly heard at the distant English camp."